Okay but it's actually wild how drawing from life so quickly rewires your brain to think about light and shapes so differently. Really helping me understand the balance of defined lines vs soft ones, texture, light... and one day perhaps I will actually be able to execute that understanding lmao

And while I'm here, here's the OTHER drawing I did with @augustw.net in my very own backyard! Does it count as a speed paint if it took me a long time

THE GOOSE IS LOOSE! I'm in this thing! www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-muddy-...

GOOD

Fear the Old Blood 🩸🧠👁️

Does anyone know if @augursociety.bsky.social is open to international trans writers right now? The guidelines seem to suggest they're open through the 15th but there's only a portal open for Canadian writers.

Today is the day authors are learning how many of their publishers straight up blew off registering copyright and I feel like that deserves a class action suit of its own if it costs everyone their settlement money from the Anthropic suit... 😒🤬

And for my fellow fans of corporate body horror, I just read "The Day Fair For Guys Becoming Middle Managers" by Rachel K Jones and can't recommend it enough www.diabolicalplots.com/dp-fiction-7...

God sometimes outlining is the fastest easiest most fun thing in the world, and then sometimes it's like every word is written on one of my molars and I have to extract them one by one

Also related (or maybe the same): Suspense is not generated by the reader not knowing what happens next. It's generated by the reader CARING what happens next.

This wasn't how I thought I'd start my morning but I'm not mad about it

FFer Read (Listen?) of the Day: "Hemorrhage" by @cyrusafisher.bsky.social on @pseudopod.org pseudopod.org/2025/02/14/p...

Doing a pronoun circle with all the other people stuck with me in the Saw trap

2025 feels like being awake during surgery

I always seek guidance and hope when things are difficult, and I try to share it. Right now all I can think is: show up for your community. In small and large ways, whenever you can, today and tomorrow and always, take care of each other. Nobody can do everything, but everyone can do something. 🏳️‍⚧️

people cope in different ways. Saw marathon

The Medicaid changes won’t go into effect until after midterms in 2027, which kinda says to me that this administration doesn’t want people to remember who did this to them.

@conquerorworm.bsky.social 👀

It's here! @conquerorworm.bsky.social and I are doing this crazy thing!

I hate birds. This eagle was so close to the naked eye and to my phone camera it's a dust mote. This sort of nonsense is going to drive me to a state of frothing madness (buying an actual camera)

Using an LLM to make Bleak House "easier" to read and extract information from, in this context, is like paying for your dinner at a restaurant and then leaving before you can be served.

Oh btw ya'll can also find me on here at @ardenellis.bsky.social which is my pen name for writing fun sapphic stuff!

Would you believe that swimming out to get this shot was NOT the point where I dunked my phone in the creek and ruined it instantly

So I bricked my phone on a hike with @augustw.net by dipping it into a creek like a donut in milk and I gotta say I'm kind of loving the no phone life. You cannot contact me. You cannot find me. I am with the brook trout.

This afternoon's writing (and accompanying side order of almost overwhelming dread) being nicely soundtracked by the latest album released by Library of the Occult, Garden Gate's Canyon of Blood File under: giallo horror, psychedelic horror and 1970s sacrificial synthesizer soundtracks

Hey ya'll, @conquerorworm.bsky.social and I are launching a new podcast where we watch EVERY SINGLE HORROR MOVIE on Shudder, alphabetically, because we're deranged.

Finally watched They/Them last night. It wasn't as atrociously bad as I'd expected it to be, but it did feel kind of like ordering a $40 steak and being served hamburger helper.

My flash piece is live, and the protagonist's wife is dead! pseudopod.org/2025/04/25/p...

CRITICAL NEWS BULLETIN: BABY CHICKENS IN MY HOME

As far as I can tell the main goal of GenAI slop (both visual and literary) is to train ever-increasing cohorts of people to believe that consuming garbage-quality 'art' is normal and everything else is pretentious or supercilious

it is ridiculous that they expect you to get all your witching done in an hour.

I’m seeing a lot of negative reviews on games along the lines of “this isn’t exactly what I wanted, even though it was exactly what was promised”. I can’t overstate how much more joy you will have if you allow art to unfurl in front of you, instead of demanding it be what you imagine you want.

THE WASHINGTON STATE BILL TO DENY GENDER-AFFIRMING CARE IS DEAD. Great job everyone! washingtonstatestandard.com/2025/02/22/r...

Growing as a writer sucks, because what do I mean I didn't understand the emotional core of the story I wrote? I'm really going to stand there and tell myself I expect *me* to do the work to fix it, too? Who the hell do I think I am? The gall of me!

Oopsie doopsie I totally didn't notice that my story went live on @pseudopod.org on Valentine's Day!! Luckily it's never too late to have a bad time in fiction :) pseudopod.org/2025/02/14/p...

there’s a bill on the floor rn to outlaw gender affirming care for minors in washington, PLEASE go to this link and select "oppose." takes 30 sec. examples on stuff to say in thread! app.leg.wa.gov/pbc/bill/1038

Etsy charging a "randomized" and non-refundable $15-29 fee to set up a new shop is honestly insulting. For years they've been slowly bleeding sellers dry with increased fees, with no improved services or value for the people who form the foundation of their business 🫠

Me waiting for @conquerorworm.bsky.social to finish the new Grady Hendrix book so I can read it next 🥺

It was getting late in Greenland's Scoresby Sound. Our captain decided to spend the night, anchorless! Floating in the middle of a calm sea, surrounded by uncountable icebergs, framed by giant mountains. A day we'll never forget! #photography #travel #bluesky #nature #landscape #naturephotography

Just making sure that everyone is aware of this crab that NOAA scientists found

I love that this is making the rounds as @cyrusafisher.bsky.social (spoiler alert for you, Cyrus) is resuming their Animorphs read on the Cracked Spines Podcast (crackedspines.buzzsprout.com, episode 1 of Animorphs here: crackedspines.buzzsprout.com/1531100/epis...)

𝘎𝘦𝘯𝘶𝘴 𝘚𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘢 of the order 𝘋𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘦𝘴. The common Archangel.🧵 Humans from the neighboring villages pay tribute to the newly born Cherubs in the form of rye bread and simple cornmeals.

i am so excited to share november’s flash fiction at @interstellarflight.bsky.social, tongue of the necrophage by @cyrusafisher.bsky.social

Submitting a story to The Dark be like

Recently finished mixed media illustration for my smarterartschool mentorship! Inspired by the ominous Bluebeard folktale.

So freakin stoked for our book club lineup this year

Castle drawings from past two years. I was particularly inspired by works of Shichiro Kobayashi